POLISH FILM ACADEMY

Świat według Kieślowskiego/The World According to Kieślowski, Editor: Barbara Kurowska, Publisher: Muzeum Kinematografii w Łodzi, 2011

Accidental Life Changes. Following Krzysztof Kieślowski

Jacek Bolewski

One of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s most valued films is Blind Chance and for many critics ‘chance’ is the key to Kieślowski’s philosophy. An interview conducted by two grammar school pupils included the question, ‘Why is there so much chance in your films?’ The answer was, ‘That’s a false impression. I once made a film called Blind Chance and from that time it’s been believed that chance is the driving force in my films and possibly also in my life; that I regard chance as something very important. I wouldn’t agree. There is as much chance in my films as in others. Not more, not less.’
(...)
That film opened a new stage in Kieślowski’s work. His earlier output had been classified as ‘cinema of moral anxiety’ and, in his opinion, that was the best description of 1970’s Poland. Soon, however, he and his colleagues came to realize that ‘this kind of descriptive process had its limitations and so its continuation did not make much sense.’ The result of this change of perspective was Blind Chance, completed under the realities of martial law in December 1981. Kieślowski tried to join in with the protest movement (...) He decided to document the trials of members of the democratic opposition which were taking place at the time. This drew him together with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, one of the most active barristers. The film was not made after all, but owing to the presence of the camera in the courtroom the sentences were less severe; apparently the judges did not want to be filmed passing unjust sentences.

Contact with Piesiewicz turned out to be very fruitful. The first effect was a co-written screenplay for the feature film, Bez końca (No End; 1984). The idea came from Kieślowski, who wanted to say that the martial law was everybody’s defeat (...) and nobody’s victory. (...) One of the lawyers said, ‘We have to wait and see. We have to give in for the time being’. However, soon another opportunity arose. This is how Kieślowski remembered it: ‘One day when it was all over, me and my co-screenwriter met in the street. (...) It was cold and raining. I had lost one glove. Piesiewicz said, You should film the Decalogue. Of course it’s a dreadful idea.’

What seemed ‘a dreadful idea’ soon became the beginning of new discoveries.

When at last the whole series was completed, it aroused great interest and brought the director world acclaim. Each episode referred to a Commandment, not so much formally as in spirit. In Kieślowski’swords, the idea was to present specific people who, in the everyday struggle and as a result of coincidences, suddenly find themselves going in circles and not realizing their purposes. We have become too egoistic, fallen in love with ourselves and our needs. [...] Somehow life is slipping through our fingers. In The Decalogue Kieślowski looks at people who come home, lock the door and remain alone with themselves. This is when a man’s inner self opens up to reveal his dramatic situation but also to suggest a way out, in the spirit of the Decalogue.

On a more personal note, when The Decalogue was premiered on Polish television, I commented on each episode right after it was shown. I believed that the films of a prominent artist, when viewed by large audiences, can stimulate reflection on essential issues of our life. As a theologian, I felt the ‘duty’ to speak about God, to indicate his presence also in those scenes which remain open to interpretation. I did appreciate, however, the authors’ artistic discretion – a telling example of keeping the Second Commandment and not using God’s name in vain. This second episode appealed to me most. God’s action was shown very discreetly here and, paradoxically, that gave the most emphatic effect.

Decalogue 2 tells of the miraculous and medically inexplicable healing of a man whose condition is so hopeless that the doctor, influenced by the patient’s wife, is ready to swear that her husband will die. In the light of his recovery the oath would have meant ‘taking the name of the Lord in vain’. Yet the sign presented in the film indicated more. The decisive change took place in the woman. Originally, she saw no conflict between her love for her husband and another man, the father of the conceived child. She thought she still loved her husband, and yet the love was partial because another part of her heart desired her husband’s death.

The first scene is very meaningful here. The woman is sitting by her husband’s bed. Although she loves him, she is not totally on his side – she does not try to help him and reconciles herself to the thought of his death too easily. She leaves him suffering as she feels separated from him by her desire to be united with another man. The husband feels this isolation when he opens his eyes after his wife has left – he realizes that he is alone.

The turning point is when the woman realizes the essence of her dilemma – it is she who is torn apart by her love. She makes the decision to stand by her husband. In the film the decision is shown on the negative side – at this moment the woman still thinks that her decision will lead to the necessity of an abortion. However, what matters more here is the positive: the unconditional ‘yes’ to her husband. The breakthrough which she has experienced is even more visible in the second scene with her husband, quite different from the first. The man’s condition is even worse but his wife is now with him. She is able to support him now with her confession ‘I love you’; he feels the support, which shows in his tears that she wipes from his face. The transformation of her love heals her husband in the end and gives him the strength to combat with death. A miracle has happened thanks to faithfulness in love, thanks to the total devotion of one partner. And, ultimately, thanks to God.

There is practically no mention of God in the film. Only one question is asked about him, and it seems that the woman is not a believer. When the doctor is asked whether he believes, his answer is ‘yes’. For her part, the woman says, ‘I have no one to ask...’ But that is not all. God appears once more, not in a human word but as Someone acting – also through fallible human judgements. In deciding to stand by her husband, the woman was ready to abort the child which was not ‘quite hers’. The child was saved by the doctor’s statement that abortion did not make sense because the man had no chance of surviving. It was this statement that made her ask the doctor to take an oath. He gave it in the end, saying ‘I swear to God’. And so the oath saved the child. Also, the oath turned out to be ‘taking the name of God in vain’ because the husband survived, too. What had been inexplicable to the doctor had, in fact, a deeper explanation. The woman’s decision to remain totally faithful was in fact an act of faith – an action open to God’s action. Therefore, the miracle that had occurred thanks to faithfulness to a spouse, had come from God after all.

I have focused on one episode of The Decalogue, the one which, to me, had the deepest message. The change in the couple’s life was not just an effect of ‘blind chance’ but the result of another ‘chance’ – a truly complete love. This kind of love is more than just ‘observation’ of the Decalogue; rather, it means fulfilling it. Jesus stressed in the Gospel that all the commandments of Moses’ law may be reduced to one: ‘to love with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength’ (Mk 12:30). The appeal to love this way, already present in the Old Testament, is well justified in the New Testament – in Jesus’ revelation that ‘God is love’ and that ‘he first loved us’ (1J4 16:19). The Decalogue does not state this openly but leads us around with subtle clues to this dimension hidden in the deep vision of Kieślowski and Piesiewicz.
(...)
 

The relation with God remains unclear (...) as in the aforesaid interview with Kieślowski. ‘Coming back to that Someone above – asked the young interviewers – do you believe in God, or just in yourself, perhaps in others, in an idea, a purpose, fate, happiness, anything?’ The answer was frank and important enough to be quoted in full: ‘It’s hard to say. I suppose it’s all of that in constantly changing proportions. And if life is interesting at all, it’s just because those proportions are constantly changing. Life is interesting because we always think that our fate is the most important or that it is shaped
by people among whom we live or by the circumstances in which we live. Or that someone controls our life. Or that coincidences happen to us and we draw conclusions. I think it’s all very fluid and complex, like a very intricate plait whose threads sometimes disappear to reappear after a while.’
 

Is it then that we give God the slip or maybe, rather, lose control of the entangled threads of our fate which we cannot grasp as a whole? The question about God in Kieślowski’s films seems to be most visible in Decalogue 1; no wonder, it deals with the First Commandment: ‘You shall have no other gods before me.’ The issue of false gods is inseparably linked with the question who the real God is.’ Episode One shows a man whose god is his computer and, consequently, a world which is programmed so as to leave no room for freedom and chance. This god fails him. But even then the main character imagines God to be a gigantic computer of a kind which calculates everything coldly in advance and much more precisely than normal computers. But there is another image of God in the film. When a boy asks his aunt: ‘Who is God?’ she thinks for a moment, then hugs him and asks, ‘What do you feel?’ ‘You love me’, the boy answers, to which she says, ‘This is what he is.’ Here is the true God manifesting himself as love. Kieślowski’s vision of God was different. Interestingly, the lines about the ‘loving God’ were not included in the screenplay for Decalogue 1. Presumably, the idea of a dialogue with the boy came from the very religious Maja Komorowska, who played the aunt. Kieślowski admitted that many of his inspirations came in fact from actors during the filming.

Extracts from an article: Odmiana życia przez przypadki. Śladami Krzysztofa Kieślowskiego (Accidental Life Changes. Following Krzysztof Kieślowski), ‘Więź’ 1999, No 1 (483)

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